


The Lion in Spring

by KhamanV



Series: The Codex 'Verse [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Codex Universe, F/M, Gen, Light Romance, Post-Season/Series 03, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-06-10 05:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6942397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KhamanV/pseuds/KhamanV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recent events have left each Agent of SHIELD in emotional disarray, and Daisy Johnson most of all.  So when Coulson asks Loki to reach out and help her, he accepts... but in his own way.  A storyteller first and foremost, Loki reveals a story of old Asgard - the embattled start of love between Odin and Frigga.</p><p>Related to the Codex storyline, but not part of the arc and can be read without it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Asgardian Patient

**Author's Note:**

> Everything set forth at the end of With Postscript to Follow is true, if you came here from the prior series. This is only a brief visit, because I realized Loki had a few things to say about the recent Agents of SHIELD finale. And because I thought the story he tells is a good one. I hope you enjoy.

The Lion in Spring

_Do not grieve.Anything you lose comes ‘round in another form - Rumi_

1.The Asgardian Patient

Loki looked at the young woman sitting on his couch, so thickly wrapped in a burly grey sweater despite the season that her shape seemed malformed.Her dark hair was hung around her like a hood, her hands remained buried within the woolen sleeves while she clutched at one of the plain but soft throw pillows he kept, and worst of all, there was the quiet that surrounded her entirely.He had never known her in stillness.That gave him the most information about the damage done, that silence.He knew about silences like hers.Many things could grow in those, few of them good.He tilted his head, considering these new wounds and the way she had earned them.“Daisy.”

Her voice was a dull and lifeless rasp.“Coulson asked you to talk to me.”

“He did, but I don’t always do a thing because someone asks it of me.”He was still considering her, watching the way her nails fretted at the edges of her clothes.The same fretting on Coulson’s face, clawing at the edges and dragging the lines at his corners of his eyes down deeper.He himself had sent the request for a visit, thinking it would be better to talk in an environment she was less attached to than her own rooms.But yes.Coulson had asked for a favor.“He’s afraid you’re going to run.”

“And you’re going to talk me out of it.”

“Am I?”Loki made a soft noise.“I haven’t hardly become that predictable, I should hope.”

A dark eye filtered out between strands of hair to dart a quick glance across him, then disappeared again.She didn’t say anything else.

“We’ve been here before, us two, though I think I like this parallel even less.”He frowned.“Daisy, I’m not much of a counselor, but I think we could agree I might know a few things about having your mind stolen from you, warped, and made not your own.To see the rubble of what comes after.”

He could hear her breathing, a rasp in the still air.

“Having gotten this far, it’s not so much just the sense of responsibility, is it?It’s the guilt. _I should have done more, said more, changed more._ It’s a haunt all its own, and not one easily banished.Cruel old ghosts, and heavy to bear.But not necessarily alone.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Loki leaned back in his chair, troubled but not surprised.“I have no intention of making you.I can’t even keep you here to put up with my droning.If you don’t want the company, my door is unlocked.I wouldn’t trap you.By now, you know this of me.”

The eye again, fleeting.At some point a while back, he had made a small, permanent magelight that traveled occasionally across the ceiling to amuse him.It put a glint in her iris, something that looked brittle under the layer of tears she was holding in.“You didn’t like him, anyway.”

He arched a dark eyebrow, frowning again at the new sharpness in her voice.“I didn’t think often on Lincoln, Daisy, but nor then did I think poorly of him.I realize that seems paradoxical.Regardless of anything else, his care for you was genuine.What I thought doesn’t matter.It doesn’t even matter if Coulson or anyone else who thought they had some claim to an opinion felt he was right for you.He was the right one for now, and his loss hurts all the more for it.Wrapped in that _weight._ ”

He could sense her tightening in on herself, wondering vaguely if next the couch was going to rattle, or his desk. Or, perhaps, his bones.It didn’t worry him.A couple people had ventured the idea of putting her back in one of those white boxes while Daisy processed an enormous amount of emotional information.For her own safety, naturally.He had, for once, taken a side outright and suggested along with others - Mack, particularly - that it would be a poor decision.Solitude fed despairs like a dog at feasting time.Loki knew that, too.

Tense, worried Mack.Silent May.And Fitz, caught between the whirlwind of a new relationship and the despair of his friends.The damage inside Daisy could be outlined by their faces.The atmosphere inside Coulson’s lair was grim despite their recent victories.The costs were being counted and deemed steeply high.No, there had been little rest since Sanctuary.And there were always wars, civil or otherwise.

“You don’t know.”

“Of your specific pain, of the hole left by your lover? No, I don’t.I know shapes like it, my own and others, and I know they won’t change easily.Or soon.You have to find your own methods.”He clasped long, bone white hands in his lap, taking her anger in the spirit intended than as the offense he might have assumed once.It wasn’t with him, after all.It was driving deeper into herself, a razor that could cut something more than bone.“Someday you’ll find a path that’s right.”He managed a slight smile.“Even if you fall into it.”

“There’s no fixing this.”

“She says to _me._ ”Loki couldn’t resist the old, sardonic roll of his eyes.“You had your skull torn open and your self poured out, filled instead with this _ideal_ that parasite put together.You lived for his vision and set yours aside, and when you were ripped from his grotesque care you had your freedom returned to you, yes, but you were also left bleeding.A wound torn further asunder when the sky lit up for a mere second.A tale ended swiftly, but harsh enough to scar.”He watched her fingers gnarl into the dark green pillow, looking like battered roots where bruises dotted the knuckles.“The scars fade, Daisy, and leave you stronger.If you choose to survive the healing.And the time.That’s a weight all its own.”He sighed, a soft exhale.“It’s easy to choose not to.I expect you’re more than that.”

The silence spread to fill the room again.He thought that was going to be it, that he’d lost her, when to his surprise she chose to speak.Her voice was still raspy and full of that fresh pain, but there was something else in it, a heat that he found encouraging.“I can’t survive it here.It hurts too much.Everyone’s too close.”

“Mm.Sometimes you have to become more deeply lost before you can find yourself.”

The eye found him again, this time staying.Loki read the surprise in it.He shrugged in response.“I know these patterns.That’s all.”

“Was losing Frigga like this?”A peek of her profile came out of the veil of hair.Curiosity wedged in a slim space next to the grief and pain.

Loki opened his mouth, realizing he still couldn’t give the answer outright.He managed something else instead.“Shapes repeat, let’s say.It’s easier to answer you through another’s perception.Their pain is the worse, and the yet-unhealed.”She furrowed her brow at him.“The All-Father, I mean.To speak as plainly as I might.The loss of his Queen… that left a scar whose depths have not yet been found.What they had between them, Daisy, was a crime to see sundered.”He sighed, still uncomfortable.“They were not perfect, you must know.There were battles and ill-fitted moments.Disagreements of many stripes.But they found something right in each other and it made Asgard all the stronger for it, in the years after Bor’s fall amongst the snow-spires of Jotunheim.”

“What were they like?” 

Her curiosity grew outward, just a little more.A hurt child that wanted a bedtime fable.It was a comfort, Loki supposed.A story of some distant fairy tale land, one that was real after all.That much he could give to help her carry her pain.It would hurt a little in the telling, but she was a friend, and he could take that much for a friend now.

“I don’t know all.But I know a few things.”Loki half-lidded his eyes, considering where best to start and what sort of tale to gather for her.“I know how they met, of course, and what that became, and of the first days of strife with Nornheim for their prophecy and then-untrusted magics.”She squinted at him, the expression odd enough for him to look up and catch it.“Nornheim is an outlying province of Asgard, itself a city-state.Not a separate realm of the Nine.Like.. Ah…”He waved his hand.“Brooklyn, or something like it.It very nearly became a tenth during the All-Father’s reign some four, five hundred years ago. But the seeds were sown well before that.Before I or Thor were born.And it all came because of that simple shortsightedness all us races seem to share - the inability sometimes to find another’s perspective.”He laughed once, shortly.“Like that Nick Fury.Even to the end, Frigga was oft Odin’s one good eye…”

. . .

The prince shifted on the makeshift cot, listening to his armor scrape the cotton and the straw while the healers whipped around in the frenetic dance of bloody triage.Riskier than usual, no less.He lifted his head and saw through the veiled slits of his helm that his neighbor in the next rickety bed over was one of the opposition survivors.The healers didn’t care what colors the wounded flew; they healed all just the same.Fortunate for himself, judged young Odin grimly, looking next at his gored leg.Nornheim might want him for a prize, should he take off his plain helm and plainer armor, but Nornheim’s healers were neutral, as were all such healers among the realm.They saw only a body in need of care.Still, they had won the day, if not as cleanly as he would have liked.His men would assert claim over the tents and temples here soon enough.For now, they could play at this feeble peace while the remnants of the battle rang in his ears.

“Lay your head back down!”The snap came from behind him, a swift set of fingers pressing down on the bronze brow of his helm.He let his head drop with a thunk, grunting by way of response.He saw a flicker of light blue gauze from the healer’s robe, lost it when she stepped closer to his neighbor.“Don’t suppose you can tell me what your lot did to this fellow.”

“Did our best to kill him, I should figure.”He kept his voice lower and gruffer than usual.“Likely with a blade.”

“Terribly useful, thank you.”The shimmer of blue again.Green folded in with it, and now a glimpse of fine leather straps along her arms in place of less useful jewelry.The healer in nature’s own finery.Odin saw light pour along the wounded enemy’s form, the small Soul-Forge wheeling off in the hands of some unseen and silent helper.He listened to the woman’s skirts whisper along the tamped down floor.“But at least you have the consideration to not suggest I finish your poor job.Twelve of your compatriots do so already.That’s more tiring than your blood and gore, the lack of empathy.”Her hands tugged at his helm.“Well, come on.I’ve a need to assess damage to your mind.”

“There is none.”Odin thunked his helm again against his cot.“Only the leg.”

“So you’re a healer as well as a blade.Would you like the day’s oration on how many concussions go unfound and undiagnosed in the heat of battle?Perhaps you’d like to hear it in a century or three, when your words begin to blur and your irritation grows swift yet you know not why.Concussions are shaving centuries off our peoples and many more beside.But not on _my_ watch.Helm.Off.”She tugged at the side of it, her fingers curling underneath where it snugged close to his nape.Short nails tickled his skin.

Odin was young enough to feel justified in his stodginess, and he let her do most of the work.He looked up at the healer when his bronze helm pulled free, her sharp features under a crown of tight honey braids, and she looked down at him, still-dark hair and two bright eyes in a roundish face.His beard was still youthfully short, a lighter brown ’til it met with the rest near his ears.She a pretty wisp, and he then a stocky little thing.Not yet the full lion grown.She pursed her lips together at the sight of him, and then looked away to summon another device.

Odin thought she might have realized the name to go with his face, but she said nothing and there was no other sound of recognition.A layer of almost staticky ether passed along his brow and the readout in her hand earned a short nod.“Very well then,” she said.“As you say.Your mind is fine.Now we can focus rightly on your flesh.Your spirit, well, that’s to be your lookout.”

“What’s your name?”He found himself almost blurting the question, wasn’t sure why.Then he found a reason.If she did recognize him, that would be a trail he could use to arrange her out of the way when his guards came, until he was well-clear of Nornheim’s fringes.Safely, of course.He would honor the neutrality of the healers, as he had been taught.

She looked back down at him, considering.“Frigga,” she said at last, the single word coming out shortly.She looked away.“I will not be your personal healer, warrior of Asgard.I do a courtesy, when asked.”She smiled back at him, and again he had that prickling sense.“I will not ask yours.For you are only a warrior, and I will see many more of you today.”

“I appreciate it, Healer Frigga.”Whether she saw his name and title or no, it appeared to be of no interest to her.Good enough, he decided.He settled back down with a nod that could mean anything, prepared for the unavoidably painful work of cleaning the long gash in his leg.Field healing lacked certain of the niceties the palace could offer.

As the pain of their work increased, he grit his teeth once and said nothing.What this Frigga said was nothing more than the truth - he was a warrior of Asgard, and so he would bear all such pains silently. They would pass, and he would conquer.

As the elder healer ran a cold-spined bone-tender down his leg, he saw her looking at him with an expression of annoyance.He thought to say something to prove his pride and power, but a hand passed over his brow and he found himself falling quickly into a painless sleep instead.


	2. House of Daggers

Odin woke with a start, though he was well-trained enough to move nothing more than his eyelids and those only slightly. His heart raced as if he’d been clubbed in battle again and he braced his muscles to see if he had perhaps been bound in chains while unconscious.

Instead he found his armor gone - worrisome but unsurprising - and his leg clean and dressed. The cot underneath him had gained an extra layer of thin comfort in a folded sheet. Another slight parting of his lids and he could see why. Much of the field hospital had been weaned out. Those that were fully healed or that could transport themselves onward to their homelands for further work were gone, the dead neatly removed, and only the ones that needed at least short term observation were at hand.

Odin noted that his neighbor, that seditious Nornheim conscript, was among the missing. He narrowed his eyes and calculated the odds of the man’s survival, finding some comfort in the idea that he was probably dead. He further wondered how it was he had fallen asleep so neatly, when he had smelled nor seen any trace of anesthesia. A small matter. Certainly it was not that he had passed out due to the pain, nor would anyone claim that. Not to his face, at least. 

So, very well, he was safe. He sat up, squinting a little at the candlelights and dwarven orbs scattered around the clean tent and its large open space. The healers still passed between makeshift beds, but slower now. He looked for the one he met and didn’t see her at first. Then he did, spying her muttering to a knot of heavily armed guards at the flap to the tent.

A knot formed in his chest at the flicker of their colors. They were not _his_ guards, and he wore no disguise now. He did not hold faith that all would heed the neutrality of the healers. He watched while the rest of his senses considered possibilities. Ways to stand his ground, optimally, but if there were no other choice, this was a circumstance in which even a great warrior might flee with honor preserved.

The healer’s muttering rose, became that sharp voice of command that had bade him lay his head down again. With a slowly arching eyebrow, Odin watched as the leader of the pack backed away a step. They did not look within the tiny gap available to them. They were all fixed on the increasingly agitated healer. She stepped forward, closing the gap. Retreat, advance. Until she snapped the flap shut in their faces. She caught his eye, her face flushed with anger. He would not recoil, not even when she abruptly chose to step towards him.

He waited to question her until she settled on the clean bale of straw beside him. “What of my faction’s guards? Why Nornheim’s? We hold the field-“

“You did hold the field, warrior.” Frigga’s voice was dour. “The battle is yours, and all them dead men I helped wrap today for the river that leads to the sea. Diplomacy, however, means otherwise for you. Nornheim sues for peace, claiming your men surge the border while a brokered ceasefire is upheld and then abused. All-Father Bor rages, but the facts, it seems, are on Nornheim’s side this time. Vanaheim backs their plea at the risk of drawing his ire further, offering evidence to bolster. He relents and your guards retreat to the border.”

Odin swore despite himself, a vivid concoction that would have caused trouble in the mead halls of the palace, but passed for milder in the field. Frigga seemed to not notice. “And our men?”

“You will be ransomed back to Asgard, likely by morning. The good ruler looks well over his men, though cautiously. Unless, of course, something else occurs.” Her frown and her glance to the flaps of the tent answered the rest.

He considered his options, still thinking of future’s combat. With what he knew of Nornheim’s warriors, pledged to that witch, Karnilla, he knew he was going to be at risk until he was away. With that in mind, he took a gamble. “Keep them out. I am Odin, Pri-

Frigga cut him off with a gesture. “I realize this, Your Highness.” She gave him a wry look while his face pinched. “You must forgive me my demeanor. It has been a long, trying day, and that was not their first attempt to gain entry. It will not be the last, and they will not succeed then, either. The elders here have decreed that our peace will not be abused, regardless of who we hold in our care. Regardless of title.”

Nettled, Odin said, “And what of earlier courtesy?”

“Well, earlier I was pretending you weren’t the royal son of Nornheim’s royal enemy.” She sniffed at him, amused.

He realized that stung a little. “And does that make me an enemy?”

“It makes you a patient and nothing else. I’ve little wish to talk politics and war with you now, Your Highness. Rest again. Your skin is still knitting itself together.” Frigga rose, although this time she allowed a brief curtsey as she turned towards the knot of healers at the rear of the tent. She looked back at him over her shoulder. “You’re safe enough here. There’s my word, if not my courtesy.”

 

. . .

 

Odin awoke again in the dark, the lights dimmed down sharply to let the gathered patients sleep. This time his instincts prickled alive, crawling over his skin like countless tiny worms. Someone was watching him, within the confines of the healerie’s tent. Worse, someone was _approaching_ him. He didn’t move, didn’t change his breathing until he had an idea of where the threat was. If it were a threat - part of him understood there was a chance it was a late night check by one of the other healers. But his instincts didn’t believe that, and though he were young, they were well-honed already.

His eyelids fluttered slightly, noting that the flap of the tent was still shut with a healer dozing in a stool beside it. He kept his breathing shallow, a sleeper’s easy mutter, until he picked out a shadow low on the ground. Closing fast.

No weapon. No armor. Was there a light nearby? And surprise - that was always a viable tactic. It bought time, the most precious of a warrior’s blades.

Odin rolled himself sharply to the right with a yell, not all for drama as his still-wounded shin caught the edge of a table. He hit the ground and scuttled quick towards the closest dwarven orb of light, moving faster as he realized that the shreds of straw that trickled after him was from a knife-strike he’d just barely dodged. He’d gained a few feet of safety, but his attacker was already struggling across the bale for another blow. That one would strike.

Still, he tore the orb free, its weird chemical light feeling cool on his hand as he flung it at the assassin.

The man barely recoiled, clad in the simple shift of another patient. The weapon must have been hidden somehow - or given. Odin caught a glimpse of his features and knew by the determination on his face that this was a man intent on death itself.

Not even seconds had gone by. He couldn’t risk turning to see the chaos of the healers. He scrabbled for another method to protect himself and found nothing. Furious, he bared his teeth at the man with the knife and let loose a roar befitting that of a dying son of Bor, breath coming sharp and fast now as the knife rose - and clinked hard against empty air.

Stunned, Odin still hissed air through his teeth as he whipped his head to see Healer Frigga approaching fast, her hands aloft. He wondered by what means she was creating this brief security, wondered just as fast if she had known, if she were in on it, and then the worst realization struck home with a cold, nauseating horror.

_Magic!_

He recoiled as she approached from within the shield’s eldritch shimmer, no longer knowing whose side she was on, no longer caring much. His attacker, however, cared very much indeed. He snapped something at her, a single word Odin eventually recognized as _traitor,_ and then found himself hurled abruptly across the tent and straight into unconsciousness. Frigga picked up the knife the assassin dropped, her expression furious.

Another healer moaned, aghast at the violence. Someone else silenced her with a mutter.

Odin slid along the taut fabric wall, banging his newly-wounded leg again as he did so. “Witch.”

Frigga looked down at him, her face still bright red along the cheekbones. She looked wild and alive, near a warrior herself. “A witch what saved your life, Prince. Think on that, as we must redress your leg.”

“Let the oth-“

She cut him off with a sharp shake of her head. “Oh, for…” A snap of her fingers, and the young prince was out again. Frigga looked over her shoulder as the body slumped, catching the disapproving gaze of one of the elder healers. “I’m very sorry, Lady Eir. It seemed more expedient than to let him go on about how awful we are. I’ll offer formal apology in the morning. After we tend him.” She thought. “And preferably just before we release him to safety.”

Eir interlaced her fingers and frowned at her student. “All your carefully taught elegance, and still too frequently you reveal brashness instead. Is there _anyone_ in the Nine you deign to fear?”

Frigga thought on that, too. “No.”

Unable to do anything else, Eir laughed. “You’ll apologize the moment he wakes up and no later.”

“Damn.”

 

. . .

 

Frigga unwrapped the stained dressing on the prince’s leg, the second such tending today. “I did say I was sorry.” She looked up when Odin said nothing. He watched her instead, wary, as if she might bite. She sighed, unsurprised. “And here we see the crux of your needless war, prince, if you’d but unbend to see it.”

He stirred, ready to speak. War. Well, it was always a good choice of topic to get the warriors going, she reckoned. “Our war is with your province’s sedition, treason, you-“

“Not my province.” She smiled a little, watching the young lord tense again. “Oh dear, now I have to apologize for that as well. I’m from Vanaheim, lord prince, and now you should have a few questions as to why Vanaheim took Nornheim’s side last night.”

“Why?” The single word, like ice.

“Because I was here and saw your warriors come ‘cross the border when they ought not to have, starting combat with our camped soldiers, and I sent word to Father speaking neutrally, but plainly, as to what I saw with my own eyes.”

“Your-“ He cut himself off, eyes narrowing in thought and then widening again as he deduced the likeliest way this would happen. The All-Father’s old friend and, occasionally, old foe. The highest lord of Vanaheim, and the one man who could hold the most sway over Bor’s mind in these matters. Jarl Freyr had children of an age, he knew, although Odin had never met them. Known little. Until now. “Frigga Freyrdottir.”

“The one and only.” Frigga snipped a length of clean gauze, then looked up at him, wry. “All our history, and naught else better than simple clean cotton for our tools.” She placed the middle of the strip underneath his ankle and proceeded to bind the wound fresh, the ends of her gauze neatly overlapping each other. “Was the advance your order, then?”

Odin looked away without answering.

“Because if it was, Nornheim can request a delay on your ransoming. That would be quite a breach. Not something an impulsive prince is prone to, and from what I hear of you, Highness, you are not often impulsive.”

“I am not.” He went quiet again, indicating he would answer no further. She had a hunch otherwise - the word had come down from Bor himself. That was a breach of honor, but only as those lesser than kings might reckon it, of course. A king’s rules might differ with the season, she found. “How is it a lady of Vanaheim becomes both witch and healer in the fields of the Norn?”

“I was the witch first, taught by my mother and her sisters.” She studied him as that pinched, ill expression passed across his face again. She set down the gauze for a moment. “There was a time, good prince, not even so long ago, when the old magics didn’t cause such fear among the palace halls. Bor learned it at the knee of another - one who, so I hear, had good reason to fear my craft. But sensible fear has a way of becoming insensible habit as the reasons fade, and here we are.”

To the prince’s credit, he took that in with a careful, thoughtful expression. “But my question remains.”

“My mother, on my father’s grace, sent me to the care of great healer Eir to learn other, more commonplace aspects of my craft - and the visceral price of violence, I’m afraid. Vanaheim does _not_ support Karnilla’s treason against the crown. But it supports Nornheim, and does not fear its traditions. These are separate issues. Will you listen, as patient and prince?”

“I will hear.”

Frustration threatened to redden her face, just as the night before. She picked up the ball of gauze and squeezed it once, feeling the cool seep into her fingers. “No, my lord, you needs _listen._ Not necessarily accept, mind, I won’t force that on you, but you won’t get far without the ability to consider another view.”

Odin shifted, clearly uncomfortable. Whether it was her words or his lingering pain, she didn’t know. “I will try.”

Good enough. She inhaled, considering. “Our All-Father is not a villain, my lord prince. Let me assure you I do not think this. But we choose our actions sometimes without full understanding. He sees corruption spreading into Nornheim, and he’s not wrong. Karnilla has taken a firm place among the people’s thoughts. But what our king isn’t seeing is that his campaign, this method of burning that blackness out, will in the end make of her a Queen of a broken tenth realm. We might never seal that breach. You are a weapon now, my prince, and common people fear weapons when they are brandished in their faces. They strike back, sometimes blindly. This needs healing instead.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Nornheim stands with her, raising arms against its king willingly.”

“Because they are _afraid._ The king no longer sees the people, them varied and of countless opinion. The king sees a specter, a villainous sorceress wrapped in darkness come to nibble away at his kingdom.”

“But Karnilla is _real._ ”

“She is.” Frigga paused. “I have met her, Odin, in respect even, though I did not bend the knee then. But she has a power here, and she is in the wrong, but nor is she all villain, either. I think she fears, too. She fears a world where magic - one of the few things we women held mostly our own, I remind - has been torn from her. This is her life, and she makes a stand against her own specter - a thing that would obliterate her and what her life has meant. Can you see how she was made, then?”

The prince looked troubled. “So we cannot war with her?”

“With her, yes, for she has sounded a war’s cry and will not stop now, but why are you ordered to strike the people?” Frigga realized she had work yet to do, picking up the gauze again to resume wrapping the wound on his leg. Eir spoke of compression being valuable in the short term, so she knotted her layers tight for now.

“Because they fight us, they let her in among them, they have chosen a fouler side. War with your king does not allow overmuch mercy.”

She shook her head, mild. From his perspective, he wasn’t all wrong, either. She finished the final braid-like wrap, tucking and fixing the ends of the gauze with a little whisper of magic. Perhaps the prince didn’t notice. She looked up when she was done, finding him studying her. “This isn’t an easy conversation, is it?”

He was silent at first. “You say this war is the All-Father’s own fault, a revenge come about as he all but wholly outlaws magic from within the boundaries of the realm.”

“Well.” She leaned back, thinking that over. “From one perspective. From another, consider it not revenge but defense. He strips not a terrifying weapon from some, but a way of life they’ve had for generations. My mother was raised with illusions and she entertains the children of her handmaidens with it. So she taught me. Are we weapons?”

“You could be.” He smiled a little at the abrupt roll of her eyes. “You were raised a witch as well as lady, and me a warrior as well as prince. Perspective. I have listened to that word. Consider mine.”

Frigga sighed, heavy. “Point taken. Is not a weapon also a tool? Then is not also magic? I would see my traditions kept, as the warriors might. Hence why I bend your ear so much, with you unable to flee.”

“Also point taken.” Odin shifted on the bale, squinting up at the morning sun. “Will I be released?”

“Soon, yes. I don’t think Nornheim has a valid claim to keep you.” She caught his look. “If asked, for my word matters some, I will side with your freedom. As healer. And as a Freyrdottir.”

“Hmm. So, very well. If a weapon is not the tool we require, and you claim healing is - how to heal a war?”

“Understanding, lord prince, is a great tool. Do you not attempt to understand your enemy’s tactics so you may counter them? That requires context, and some respect.” She clasped her hands together on her lap, her wrists absently smoothing out the soft blue cotton of her robe. She didn’t wait for an answer. “The trick, _I think,_ to rout an enemy, is to give them no place for shelter among the people. No rock to hide under, when the people can see that the fears the enemy uses to sway them are not true. You strike - Karnilla proves out that Bor will destroy all lives touched by magic. You strike Karnilla alone but look for peace again with the people at the edge of the Norn’s lake, and she will have fewer places to run.”

“A slower fight.”

“By far. Possibly marked in centuries, and not the rout of a few years. But this might _last,_ and the peace might endure a future assault when that new threat finds no purchase.” 

“But meanwhile Karnilla will strike and harry and kill ours. No few lives over those centuries lost.”

“Fewer by far than this war that could become a horror. Will Bor sunder the realm for a witch-queen? In fear, I fear he might.”

“My father is _not_ controlled by his fears. Magic is a risk. This theory of yours requires _that_ perspective must soften again as well.”

Frigga opened her mouth, then let that go. “And yet I state a possible outcome.”

Odin grunted, looking away. “I will consult with the strategists and the scholars. When I return. I have listened. I will consider the things you say, but I remind you I am not King and All-Father. Not yet. In the end, my thoughts mean little.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” Frigga rose with a slight bow as Einherjar warriors in the livery of the palace broke the profile of a nearby hill. “For your time.”

“And for your… courtesies,” said Odin, wry. “I will remember these.”


	3. Asgardian Gold

Daisy flexed her fingers, the ragged edge of a nail tracing along the bumps of the knit pillow she held. Her face had emerged from its veil of hair, listening intently as he talked of things from long ago. “Not exactly love at first sight, was it?”

“Nor fully another war, I suppose.” Loki chuckled softly. “Both of them had strong wills and strong minds. We have a way of remembering these things, I think. And when Odin returned home to Asgard, flanked by his men, he remembered very well the healer who spoke to him not as a prince alone. As I understand it, he kept his word, consulting advisors quietly under Bor’s aging eyes. He studied magic a little - not as a practice, as your mad mythology puts it - but just as she suggested. The context of your enemy’s tactics. He was trying to understand.

“Yet meanwhile, Bor’s obsessive war raged on as his son considered the things he heard. Karnilla dug in, emboldened by his assaults along the border of the province, the All-Father even going so far as to raze a village that had once kept ancient scrolls of lore between, and this is true, jotun shaman and Aesir sage. She took claim of the great Nornkeep, where deep beneath its stones rested one of the mystic pools of the Norn Sisters themselves, and when they did not personally rise to throw her out on her arse, she declared herself a Queen of Magic. If not yet Nornheim proper. So they rallied, and Karnilla collected disenfranchised, frightened mages, and they kept Bor from finding purchase in their lands. The war was stagnant then but also still aflame, a growing threat. A cancer nigh the heart of the realm.”

“That’s… kind of awful.” Her brow furrowed, skin still too pale to be healthy. “Why was magic so bad?”

“Any number of complicated reasons. One boiling point was how Bor’s grandfather comes afoul of some historical conspiracy. He left his throne to his son, Buri, for reasons that, some believed, come down to evil bewitchment. He disappeared for many years, and when his unharmed body, now dead, finally reappeared, it was brought home encased in enchanted ice. Not only was magic whispered of as a killing curse, but some seeds of renewed jotun fear were sown fresh.”

“Anyone know what really happened?”

“It’s interesting you ask that.” Loki chuckled, resettling himself comfortably in his chair. One leg slung easily over another. “Not that I utterly led the question.” He saw the ghost of a smile on Daisy’s face and took it as a victory. “Ask the lords of Asgard and they will say that the weary old king sought to recuse himself and have his last century in peace, then assassinated for a prize by the jotun by that same witching ice-magic. And thus a son, all but abandoned by a father, learns to fear. The fear passes to the next generation and warps into a distaste for _all_ magic and its diseased roots. Those old alliances, in lost eras.

“But I had an occasion, not so long ago, to ask Queen Farbauti about this ancient mystery of ours.” Loki leaned back as his smile turned grim and unsurprised. “And do you know? Jotun lore says that Bor’s grandfather took a jotun wife in that secret privacy and stayed in solitude for love in his last years.”

_“Are you shitting me?”_ The tiniest gleam of the old Daisy peeked through. “That’s better than a soap opera!”

“Gets worse. The old king dies of old age, untouched by violence and lovingly cared for, and his grieving shaman wife places him in ice and sends him home in one form of great honor known to jotun alone. And she and her kin are _very_ confused when Asgard riles itself into a tizzy over what she felt was her gentle act. In safety, here in scant years before their war with Asgard lights anew, they withdraw and speak little of the matter. Only her fellow shaman knew her loss, and so the tale one day much later came to a shaman Queen. And then to me.”

“Oh my god, can’t people just talk to each other?”

“To hammer my mother’s point - which one, amazingly, I suppose it actually doesn’t matter - you need to be capable of _listening_ first.” Loki laughed, not a little at the absurdities of his own life. “Not to mention some would have found the jotun’s version of the tale just as vile as, well, some of the jotun themselves did. Hah, then. Moving on. Odin is now away from the fire’s edge, trying to look at the matter through another’s eyes. But those eyes are not truly his, and so he remains troubled by this new perspective on his father’s war. So he does the only thing he can think of to help him consider these riddles further…”

. . .

Frigga absently patted the neck of the bay horse she’d been granted to ride to the palace’s golden gates on, her nose filled with the scent of hay and his silvery mane’s warm musk. The reddening sunset warmed her cheek and royal horseflesh both. She enjoyed that earthiness but didn’t focus on it. Instead the questions lingered - why was she summoned to the great halls of Asgard? Why now? And by whom?

She expected she knew the answer to the last all too well. Odin Borson, come to claim her time for his own while the wounded still filled the fields of Asgard and Nornheim both. Irritation swept through her. He made to bother others with his curiosities when he departed the border, he didn’t need a field medic whose hands were better use elsewhere. Of what value would a visit with her be?

Unless, of course, this was a quiet royal summons for _whatever_ reason. Preferably not for the controversy of her skills. Jarl Freyr’s diplomacies were not always outlined to the rest of the family in useful advance. She looked down at herself, smoothing the folds of her brilliantly amaranth dress into place. Colors chosen and hemmed herself, pressed into dye by Eir, that archaic herbalism a fond hobby of the elder healer. There was always comfort found in the things she helped make, and that kept even the ghost of fear at bay. Any kind of armor, particularly in a place where traditional armor would not do her much good.

The stablemaster led the bay away as she stood there, somewhat at a loss, when the gates creaked open. Relief followed by irritation as she saw the stocky form of the prince just within. Her first guess was the better, she reckoned. She cut her curtsy with full elegance, regardless. “Your Highness.”

“My lady,” said Odin, his voice as ironic as she quietly felt. “Your eyes give it away. Only just arrived and you’re annoyed with me. I suppose that’s no surprise.”

“And should I be?” She looked up into his dry smile, adjusting a thin leather bangle in an attempt to draw his eye from her face. Perceptive man, more so away from battle’s heady scent. Well, damn that, too.

“I would prefer not, but we don’t always get what we want.” Odin bowed his head with its tumble of dark hair politely, offering his arm as the gentlemen would away from war’s field. Attempting to at least hide her hesitation, she took it and allowed herself to be guided into the palace. “Wise as you are, you surely guess my purpose, and even that no doubt sours you.”

“You have your men and your books. And I have my wounded, my prince.” She had only seen the great gold palace once before, in a tiny youth. It was hard to not be drawn to some of its finery as she passed, looking at great statues and flowing curtains as he led her deeper inside. On its cool marble floors, even her soft heels clinked like music. “I’m not certain of what use I can be to you, when war continues so brutally.” The last came out sharper than she intended, causing a silence between them. “I apologize. It’s still not in your hands to simply call a peace, nor ought I browbeat you for it with my tone.”

“We don’t always do what we do for reason’s sake. I am armored enough here, I can take it. Not much of a warrior I would be, that thin-skinned.” He sounded amused, but not at her expense. “And besides, well, I do precisely that. Call you away from where you think you do the most good. But consider - perhaps I am coming around to some other ideas, and in those, there might be value you have _not_ thought of.”

She frowned at him, then found herself distracted by a small balcony with a spray of exotic flowers she had seen only in paintings. They bloomed tall and rich, a deep alizarin red touched by fire’s orange at the bottom cup of the petals. Even the stems were red, and the trace of pollen that dusted the marble rail. “Are those-“

“The lilies of Muspelheim, no longer easily found there I’m told. The temperature rises as you approach.” He let her arm go, watching her as she fixated on the lovely rarity. “My mother took a few of them once, as she visited Bor at battle long ago. They took hold, now thrive even long after she passed into the stars.”

“Eir would maim and murder for a cutting of those,” she said in a low voice, starting a bit when Odin laughed. She ran a hand through the air above them, feeling their warmth tickle her palm. “I barely exaggerate. I saw her haggle for a violet the perfect shade and hue once, a perfect breed with perfect seeding potential. The merchant looked like he’d been bowled over by a troll army. She got what she wanted, and at a bargain to boot. I fear what would have happened had he not bent to her rule.”

“A body in the alley, come the morn. All them violets and more lifted away in the night to some better place.”

“You joke. But I know.” She couldn’t stop the smallest of giggles, turning away from the flowers as she thought. It might be worth pleading with Father come the next feast-time, an offering from All-Father through Jarl to well-honored teacher. Eir would be ecstatic for even the smallest seedling. “Regardless. I distract myself.”

“The palace is itself built to distract.” Odin shrugged. “A privilege and a toy meant to feed an idle and sometimes aging mind. It does its job well, and sometimes it even buys time against a polite aggressor.”

Frigga cast a look at the winding halls ahead and considered the sprawl of the place, growing aware it would take a decade before she would be able to travel more than the main corridors without some sort of guidance. An impossible task on this small trip. “Sometimes the impolite, too, I wager.”

“Ah yes, them too.” Odin huffed a breath and offered his arm again, gesturing down a corridor leading up. “The simplest choice of what staircase to take can have you either chasing your heels or take you direct to the tower you sought. And sometimes up goes down.” He looked at the path he’d chosen, apparently realizing his words might have a dire implication. His voice turned light to ease any worry. “But more often up does indeed go up.”

“And what’s up?”

“The dining hall of kings, for one.” He smiled down at her as she looked at him quizzically. “‘Twould be rude to have you arrive and sent to guest chambers without any supper. The king seats already, and we must join him. My duty as son, and you as good guest and daughter of his friend, Vanaheim’s great lord.”

Hours of dining and fidgeting amongst visiting noblemen, away from whatever slow purpose the prince had in mind. The irritation threatened to return. She hid it, looking up the stairwell with doubt instead.

The prince grinned. “The old man is used to his son disappearing after bolting his food, and he takes little notice of the guests once the mead pours. But I recommend at least lingering ’til the second cheese course is passed around.”

Mollified, she ventured her question. “Less rude?”

“No, the cheese this year comes mostly from the Nidavellir dwarves. I have _no_ idea what they do to their goats, but by all the gods, I pray it continues.”

Frigga found she could not bury down the laugh his hungry earnestness gave her. It rang along the walls of the narrow staircase as they went above for a formal introduction into the All-Father’s presence.


	4. The Red Lily

Frigga found herself unable to sleep after the grand feast, finally rousing out of a bed far too soft in comparison to a field’s cot to place herself in the high window instead. She lit a candle nearby with a snap of her fingers, enjoying the brightness of a little nighttime star of her own as she toyed with her unbraided hair. Then Frigga frowned, thinking her brief encounter with the All-Father over.

Bor was a bull of a man, stoic and steadfast. She saw the ghost of his son in his face, but there was something much harder in this king’s countenance. The cost of age and countless wars. Freyr spoke of him well, but also cautioned her many times about the anger he had in his younger years. There was a line of the berserker’s blood in the royal family, she heard. It burned close to the surface of Bor’s skin. She wondered about his son, then, as well.

Unlike the calm, dull noblemen she expected, Bor ate with his warriors. Generals and chiefs and even the high commander of the Einherjar took space at his high table, with the young prince given a seat of honor amidst. She sat further down, with the handmaidens of a meeker Queen who seldom sat by her lord’s side. She passed along Frigga’s back once, and when she bowed her head in respect, a slight hand reached out to grip her shoulder as if to give some quick comfort. Not the prettiest of women, but she had a kind face and Frigga liked her immediately.

It balanced out the conversation at the high table, booming enough to fill the hall. In it was that lingering berserker fury, and as much talk about the war at their border as security would allow. They spoke, naturally, of choke points and terrain, of logistics and timetables. She heard little about people - except the sorceress Karnilla, of course. The great witch herself. And the words chosen for her were just as unsurprising.

Discomfort rose to burning within her, driving her away well before the second course of those fine, soft cheeses. She couldn’t bear it that long, knowing the prince’s eyes were on her. At any moment, with him there, there was a risk he would be foolish and name her as a witch. A small worry, but real. Why? Perhaps to support one of these thus-far unspoken ideas of his. Then, amidst all those warriors, she might have to learn a bit more about fear, and quickly. So she left - with a spare roll and a small lump of that delicious cheese hidden in her robe. Again, habits from the field, out of place but comforting in the luxury of the palace.

Frigga put her hand high on her chest as she thought the scene over, feeling the steady but quick flutter of her own heart. “I don’t fear them,” she said to the gleaming stars. “I fear their fear. If they knew, they would stop seeing me and see Karnilla’s face instead. Father’s name just might not protect me here.”

The golden gleam of the walls seemed to dull around her as she realized this, and she allowed her thoughts to drag her down into that gloom. It was broken not long later by a soft knock at the door. Servants, no doubt. She looked around to see that she was decent, looked to be certain her candle’s magic didn’t scream her secret, and then said, “You may enter.”

The head that popped through the small gap was _not_ a servant nor a handmaiden. On reflex, she clutched her robe tighter around her nightshift. Odin smiled at her motion. “Certain of that?”

Frigga huffed at him, still too startled to speak.

He brought a plate into view, loaded high with dwarven cheese and fresher bread than her hidden snack. “Bribery might help my cause. I stole more cheese and bread since I saw you liked it - is it stealing if it is mine own house?”

“Wouldn’t think,” she managed.

“Me either, now I realize.” Odin took a cautious step in. “To be honest, I’ll probably eat half of it and more myself. But all that aside, company makes a better meal, and I saw your candle lit.”

She glanced out the window as if she would spy the royal chambers amidst all the dozens of towers that could potentially be such royal chambers, then flushed when she realized her own silliness. “It depends on the company, I’m afraid.”

“More honesty. I saw your face at dinner, though I think I was the only one. Well, no. Mother did as well, I expect.” He frowned. “I’ll try to be better company than the last gathering. May I indeed come in?”

She relented. “Yes, you may.”

He shut the door behind him and ambled towards a small table near her. She noticed the sound of soft padding and looked down to see his feet were in slippers, an oddly huge amount of soft grey-brindled fur poking out of their tops, and she found another laugh struggling for freedom. It drew his glance, and then his curiosity. “I’m sorry. Your feet.”

He looked down. “They chill easily, have all my life. My mother’s inherited curse. It’s-“

“They’re so _fluffy_!” The laugh burbled out, cut off as she clasped her hand over her mouth.

He flushed and she felt the laugh trying to die as she remembered that strain of berserker blood, but then he laughed a little, too. “I never take them on march, but there I am in my battle tent at the edge of some chilled land - Jotunheim, more than once - and I wish I’d brought them, damn appearances to Hel. I know. Royal feet wrapped fit to be a child’s toy.”

The giggle became a calmer snicker. “They’re very sensible footwear, Your Highness.” The snicker went right back to the gigglefits and now she bit her palm to keep from alerting someone in the hall.

“I can see I’m going to eat all this cheese by myself.” He sat at the table with false brusqueness. “It’s royal cheese, and not for the rude.”

Frigga took a breath, steadying herself before pushing free of the window’s ledge. “I’ll toss a crust of bread at your head, see if I don’t.”

“Oh, you would. I have no doubts.” He passed her a torn piece, prepared for the worst. His voice went light again. “Aim for the right part of my skull. I took a blow there once, probably one of those concussions you mislike, and I expect you have a better chance of real damage done.”

Oddly, that made her laughter subside entirely. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you,” she said, and knew that was true. Frigga sat at the table across from him, her brow knotting once before she decided to eat the piece of bread instead.

“I don’t know why I find that surprising.”

“Is it because of what I am?”

That edge again. Odin put down the bread he held, with its smear of cheese. “No. Because it’s plain to me you don’t much enjoy the company of people who get on the wrong side of you. Which is only reasonable.” He tilted his head towards her, eyes closing. “I apologize for my reaction, when you intervened on my behalf against my attacker. Taught fears - yes, I suppose that is indeed what they are - overtook what I should have seen first. Magic or blade, you took a side, and it was in my defense against someone who seemed to assume you might take his.”

Frigga sat quietly, absorbing his apology. Like his hunger earlier, it was plainly earnest. “There are some in Nornheim so under Karnilla’s sway that they think all who know a spell ought bow to her, and are astonished when we do not.”

The piece of bread still sat untouched as he studied her. “That is the first key to understanding, isn’t it? This is not a two sided war. It never was. Perhaps it never is. Are there three, then? Four? At minimum, I expect. And no, these struggles cannot all be won with steel.” A troubled look passed across his face. “These things are why I asked you to come. Father’s men are simpler, and even the scholars are more hushed inside palace walls than I think they ought to be. So I read instead, but full comprehension doesn’t come from silence alone.”

“If it makes you feel better as a warrior of Asgard, at least this means you still think most your hours on battle.” She said it wryly, meaning it as a joke.

“I think on you, mostly,” he said abruptly, then fell silent. The flush threatened again, visible mostly at the tips of his ears. “I mean as that perspective I lack.”

Frigga took another piece of bread, then some cheese as he passed her a dulled spreading knife. His odd embarrassment didn’t gain much notice. She was busy thinking about his new approach to the war. “Even the smallest change in a viewing angle can help.”

“Perspective again.”

“Yes, I am rather banging on about it. I’m sorry. Yours is changing, however. That is valuable, probably more valuable than you realize when you say you have no power over the All-Father.” She looked up at him, her eyes widening a little. “But you certainly have some sway among his men, especially those who have stood with you on the fields. With the people who know the popular young prince destined to take the crown. These would listen should you venture another option. A more pragmatic option.”

Odin shifted in his chair, something tense creasing his cheeks. He looked down at his bread. “You ask me to become a leader before my time.”

“Your Highness, you are already that. What I do _not_ ask is for you to usurp a king before his time. Only to be that different view. These things spread like good moss at the bottom of a stream, one stone to another ’til the water turns pure again. You could do that, I think. It’s strength it takes, but not the kind you use in battle.”

He shifted still. What he said next was a non-sequiter. “You thought I might expose you at dinner. ‘Here, my lords and friends, my new companion. The healer and only daughter of Jarl Freyr. She has a witch’s craft, by the way, don’t tear her apart too quickly.’”

“I didn’t think on that seriously,” she admitted. “But I did think a little. Enough to make me feel better in leaving.”

“You talk of context and empathy. But these men… Karnilla’s way is all they know. The old curses and the new fears. They don’t know small magic. They don’t know your mother’s illusions.” Now he looked up, and his face was serious. “If I must be brave, there might be other bravery as well to shore up that wall.”

Frigga felt a chill hit her bones and the sweet taste of the cheese turned sour. _Oh_ , she thought. _That’s fear_. “Your Highness, you cannot order me to that.”

“No, I can’t. I won’t. I won’t even ask. But it’s something to consider.” He frowned. “We fear magic now because we do not know it. If we did, if there were some other presence to show our people that Karnilla is not the only face of that power, that might mean as much as my voice of reason. I want help, Lady Frigga, but I can’t ask you for it. I saw your face. That is a great burden, the kind that can only be taken freely.” He pushed the plate aside, looking steadily at her. “I will try to be a voice, I think, in the time ahead. Meanwhile, with no other request, may I know I at least have a friend?”

That earnestness. Something puppyish hidden in a young lion’s mane. She wanted to respond to it, but found an odd last piece of defensiveness. “Do you change course so quickly? We last met on a battlefield, and you seemed willing enough to fight then.”

“Was it quick?” He arched an eyebrow. “For me it’s been long hours since returning to the palace. Long enough for a great deal of thinking and not so much sleeping. To which end, it is quite late and I endanger your propriety enough.” He smiled. “I’d like a friend. My considerations are honest and slower-gained than you think. In a palace’s comfort, my days are not taken with the screams of the wounded I made. Not like yours. I think yours go quicker in need.”

She frowned. He had a point, a good one, and she found she wanted to believe him. “You have a friend, Your Highness. As to the rest, I have much to think on.”

“We both do.” He shoved back in the chair, making to rise. Then he paused, a hand rustling at a pocket of his own evening robe. “One more thing. I won’t ask you to stay past the morning, your wounded need you more than I, now that we’ve talked. But I’ll ask you to pass this along to its intended, and be it known it’s by your thought and wish that it’s given. You’ll know who.” He passed a small, slender box to her, about three inches long, and he made his exit with a graceful bow.

Too curious to leave it for long, Frigga popped open the lid and with lips parted in surprise she breathed in the warm, heady smell of the small cutting inside, laid carefully in moist cotton and a trace of clean soil. That priceless lily of Muspelheim, and a prime piece to be replanted and grown into many more such jewels. She closed the box gently, stunned.

. . .

“You’re not courting Freyr’s daughter, are you?” Bor didn’t look up from his plate nor his papers, greyed hair knotted tightly back in a tangle of warrior’s braids. “Saw her abouts of late. Dinner, few months ago. She was introduced then. Not seen her since she were a babe.”

“I consider her a friend, my lord father.” Odin stood at attention by tableside, studying the old king. “A matter of interest and some diplomacy.” A careful answer. He was content with it.

“Good.” The word came out shortly. “Not that she’s a poor choice, far from it. But when this war is over, I look to Alfheim. Vanaheim is already well befriended, they don’t need more from me. They’re more distant. Asgard could use some strengthened ties elsewhere.”

Odin found himself looking away, feeling a kind of irritation Frigga would find most familiar. “We abolished state marriages some generations back, I thought. I felt rather secure I would choose my own bride, in due time.”

“Oh, of no doubt.” Now the king’s eye flickered up to study him, dark brown amidst the grey and still sharp. “I merely have full confidence in my son to know what’s best not only for him but for for his future reign.”

Odin tilted his head politely, his hands clasped tight behind his back. He could not know the Earth concept ‘railroading’ for its namesake was not yet invented there, but he knew the general idea uncomfortably well and long decided he resented such manipulation. Unfortunately, Bor was a stubborn man, and it was one of his commoner tactics. “Of course I do, lord father,” he said, keeping his expression neutral. “All matters will be well considered.”

Bor grunted. He shoved a few of the parchments under his hand towards his son. “The war still burns, the border of our realm still in doubt against that witch’s machinations. You’ve been in the palace a while, your men take their season of rest. Well-earned, don’t think I mean to chide you for it.” He looked up to study his son’s carefully mild face. “But I think it’s high time you return to the field. There have been questions rising about the rightness of our cause.”

Well, yes. Some of those questions had come from a particular source over the months since he brought Frigga to the palace, mutters from prince to soldier to common folk in the markets. Odin remained silent. Bor didn’t bother with rumor much, nor many of those spycraft arts. It was Odin who learned to train birds - smart ravens and a few smaller but bright crows - from a young age, and use them to spread word quicker than a page might. As the only real source for that art in the palace, it would be a small matter to keep Bor from fingering him for spreading ‘nonsense.’ He didn’t like where this was going, regardless.

“Hm. Once they see you stand at the head of your warriors once more, there will be fewer questions.” A grey beard jutted at him. “You’ll muster out in the morning. Eastern boundary line.”

“Do we have a plan in mind, my lord?”

“We do. You’ll be briefed on it on arrival. Ensure you depart from the front gate. I want the people to see their prince well-armored, like the fine warrior you are.” Bor rose and for a moment his pride in his son was clear on his face. The better moments. He reached out and clapped one hand on Odin’s shoulder. “Go, and serve Asgard with all your grand might.”

Odin bowed, but felt a doubt crawl into his shadow for company.


	5. We Little Women

5\. We Little Women

. . .

Odin waited until he was alone in his tent, his advisors and command staff departing for their own private tents. When all he heard was the fire crackle in the brazier and the hoot of some bird in the night, he slapped furiously at the message sent by the All-Father’s top generals in his name. “A massacre, he wants. A rout. What honor in that? What _honor?_ ”

The old ways he had learned as a child reminded him that it was, from Bor’s view, quite honorable. The eastern region held not only a swath of farmland that the plan would scorch through, but two full barracks of men that could be cut from holding the key heartlands. They were enemy, and the farmers fed them. Food and troops both, critically tactical targets. Perfectly honorable. All above board, in the crucible of war.

And from the survivors, fanatics would rise and know down to their souls that Karnilla’s way was the best one. After all, she hadn’t burned them out of their homes. She would welcome them and feed them, and tell them all about how the All-Father was a destroyer now and nothing more. Odin knew that Frigga would be dead to rights about that outcome. Odin swore and slapped again, watching the papers spill to the ground from behind the red anger that veiled his eyes. Not only that, but his own legacy would begin to change. He strove to be a right and honorable warrior, mercy granted when it was earned, and fairness for all in his path despite the rank they were born to. But a strike like this one would paint him ruthless, too. There could be value in that, long-term. He knew it wasn’t a value he wanted, not like this. To do otherwise, however, would put him against the word of his king and father. Brand him a traitor. And his words meant to try to help defuse tensions elsewhere would become dust as Asgard became convinced he was bewitched by Nornheim’s side.

_Maybe I am_ , he thought with a frown. He found himself thinking more often of quick-tempered Frigga, and not always in context with what he was trying to accomplish in slowing this mad war. Frigga.

The sight of her tight gold-honey braids filled his mind’s eye, and he abruptly realized he had an idea.

. . .

“Your raven damn near scared my assistant out of her mind!” Frigga tugged at the edges of her cowl, ensuring her face was buried deep within it. She looked back to see her horse still tied to the trunk of a leafy tree, her and it kept under its branches and blocked from the sky’s full view. “You can’t be on this side of the border alone for long, the patrols have gone up. So that considered, this best be important.”

“It is, and I need you to listen well.” Not thinking, Odin reached out and grabbed her arm, drawing her close so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice to speak. He was under a hood also, and in his hand were more papers than he could reasonably attach to one of his birds’ legs. He caught her staring at him at the abrupt motion. “Apologies. I need you to feed information elsewhere.”

“I won’t do Asgard’s work for you, won’t help you make more wou-“

_“I would never ask that of you!”_ Despite himself, that came out in a hissed near-snarl, far louder than he intended. His own horse whickered, sensing distress. “I’m trying to _save_ some damned lives, and I’ve called to my friend to help me.”

That made her quiet, glancing at the crinkle of parchments. “What am I sending?”

“Troop movements. _Tomorrow._ Say a scout at the border caught sight of my vanguard as we leave camp in the early morning, marked our path ahead. These are the reports this nonexistent fellow might write. If there is a waiting force at the fjord two miles inland, even a small one, we can’t pass through. We’ll be pushed back. No air-chariots were sent for this, so land and narrow water is all we can travel.”

She was thinking quickly. “And likely captured.”

“That’s a risk. But if we get past that bottleneck, we surge into the fields in the afternoon. You’ll smell the smoke by evenfall. The farms go first, and we’ll be atop the barracks before they so much as get their boots on. It’s a firestrike, quick and violent, even for war. And if we accomplish it, we’ll win the region within another month - and by _your_ reckoning, lose the war in all the ways that count. I’ve looked ahead, as a warrior and tactician. This is an unworthy move.”

“The All-Father can’t ask for a strike like that.”

“He can. He grows pressured by our new notions as they take hold in the city square, feeling like his people turn against him. He thinks showing the fuller might of Asgard will fix anew the people’s awe for their king and his decisions. It worked against the Dark Elves, he thinks. And once he gets what he wants from this… well, I’ll spare you my projections. They are unpleasantly bold.”

“Dear gods.” Frigga stepped back. She plucked his hand from her arm and Odin realized her hand was cold. She shook her head. “I can get word out. I’ve ways that will work here. But again, you stand a fair chance of being taken before you can retreat.”

“That’s not a concern, save for my reputation. Again there’ll be a rans-“

“No. There won’t be.” She looked up at him and he realized the normal blush of her cheeks had gone white. “Karnilla has rooted deep, and now she looks to send a message that will cement her claims. If you’re taken from the fjord and brought further inland, she’ll have you kept. And likely killed, as a butcher of her people.”

Odin looked down at her, realizing that he was unworried. “Then we fret about that as it comes.”

“You can’t seriously accept that risk, lord prince.”

“I have no choice. Either this, or I ensure I _am_ her butcher, as she claims.”

Frigga opened her mouth, then closed it again. She looked troubled, not meeting his eyes as he pressed the bundle of forged reports into her hand. She shook her head. “There must be another.”

“If one occurs to you, by all means, enact it and save my skin for me.” He laughed, still feeling that odd, deep calm. His voice turned soft. “If you cannot, it isn’t yours to bear. These are my decisions, after all, and you hold no blame for swaying my mind. I have been thankful for it.”

“I did, though.” Frigga stepped once away from him and looked up at him, quick, before turning away to her horse. He couldn’t read what was in her eyes. “No blame, but some responsibility.”

“Let it go, and think of the wounded we’ll avoid.”

“No. Now I’ll think on the _dead._ ” She looked back, something set in her jaw. That high, hot-blooded thing in her, some ferocity Odin realized he’d admired from the first. The fear of her sorceries had been a small thing, a mistake born from things he had been taught. It was her mind and fearlessness that caught his notice. And the color of her hair. He couldn’t help but smile at her stubborn tone. “Best that cold Mistress be denied. I’ll think of something.”

“If anyone can, Lady Frigga, I expect it’s you.” He bowed, much lower than he ought to anyone but his own King and Father. “So for that hope, I’ll hope to see you again soon.”

“And you,” she said, her brow furrowed at his gratitude. “Somehow.”

. . .

“Obviously he doesn’t die.”

“Well, _obviously,_ yes, but I note you’re sitting on the very edge of my couch for _whatever_ reason.”

“I’m comfortable.” Daisy shifted, the expression in her dark-ringed eyes making it obvious that the harder outer edge of the couch was doing its best to numb her butt.

“Of course you are. Now then. Odin marched his men towards a fjord that today, thousands of years later, is still named in an old tongue for a witch’s crossing. He rode at the head of the vanguard as though nothing were amiss, and his men were none the wiser to his deed the night before. Fear took him when at first there were no signs of opposition waiting, but as they approached the shore of that quick river, arrows rang out, and then golden flickers of magic light meant to cut off an easy retreat. The latter caused wild shouting among the men, even though by some miracle none of the magic in this scuffle was meant to cause harm. Their voices made a few of the horses panic, and thus the less-seasoned soldiers in the back became the wall that helped capture the vital officers.

“The young fled back to Asgard’s border, unharmed for once, a better outcome than you come to expect in war. But Odin and his trusted men were surrounded fast…”

. . .

Frigga watched the melee through a small mirror cupped in her hand, her lips tight enough to nearly disappear. There would be no wounded, so they would not come to the healer’s camp further along where, fortunately for Odin, she had been placed. But then, she had not returned to the camp after her meeting with the prince, claiming a need for the comforts of home. A privilege she used rarely, but enough that it wasn’t remarked on. Nor the timing of it. Instead she sat in a tent belonging to one of Vanaheim’s own generals - a neutral party on the border of both Asgard and Nornheim, there for purposes of her own security if the Jarl felt war grew too dangerous for Vanaheim’s only daughter.

Jarl Freyr was a pragmatic man, and on occasion too protective. General Agnar was smarter in some things, and ironically, easier for her to influence. He strode into the tent and she dimmed her mirror to listen to what he had to say. “Karnilla will owe us well for this, not that I care much for her gratitude. I suppose it’s fortunate for the raiding party that farmer came to us with these notes instead of going up to the barracks. We’ll be able to barter on behalf of both sides, though she has a claim here we can’t deny easily. Damn this ridiculous war.”

“We were closer,” said Frigga, perfectly calm. The ‘farmer’ was Odin’s nonexistent scout. Of course, she’d had to do a little quick editing of his reports to fit her new narrative. “Has Karnilla sent her demand?”

“Rider’s been spotted coming from the Keep. Formal, like. She could have just done a mage’s sending, but she’s doing this by the old book. Like the king would. You can sense the sarcasm in it. We’ll hear from them perhaps an hour or two after we secure the prisoners here.” Agnar settled himself heavily in his camp chair, wiggling a little as the rough canvas bottom squeaked and stretched. “Her order will be wholly legal, you know.”

“Not what she’ll do when she has the lord prince.” Frigga closed the lid of her mirror, absently tapping it against the table as her mind worked. They were not pleasant thoughts. “You know what fate she has in mind.”

“Aye. Asgard took countless of hers these years. She’ll take just one of theirs, and make it slice to the bone.” Agnar leaned back, broad and gruff and almost as old as her father, though the braids in his beard were still freshly red. “You know, Lady Frigga, but you don’t. I’ve seen what anger and power can do in a war. More than once, and in years even darker than these. She’ll have him flayed first, like as not. By flame lords and them things in the dark your mother warns of. Asgard wants to fear magic? She’ll _ensure_ they do.”

“Madness on both sides.” She looked away, not wanting to picture this possible fate. Not when as much as there was war painted across her thoughts of Odin, there was also the image of a thoughtful young man in thick slippers. It was that one she wanted to see unharmed, and the one that would be burned out first.

“That’s war.” Agnar chuckled, no humor in it. “Honor is our watchword, to keep the fire from consuming us. That is why we strap it in gold and in song, to remind us how to stay worthy and to not confuse might with murder. Why we try to keep you ladies from it, where possible.”

“There’s little honor here. The fire burns white-hot.” Frigga looked at him and then smiled, thin and grim. “And no small part of the danger here is from we women, isn’t it?”

Agnar took that in, his expression saying he tasted something sour. “Someday the Jarl is going to find out who taught you daggers and the long knife both, and on that day, I pray to the gods I’m long dead.”

. . .

Frigga had enormous freedom when among Vanaheim’s camp, but not total, not when security mattered most. So she could not get to Odin when they corralled him and five of his commanders in a pen to await the arrival of Karnilla’s messenger. Had she time, she could have found other ways through her talents to send word she was watching over him - but he was not alone and seldom was she.

She had an idea, but it was going to cause trouble. She found herself biting her lip and plucking nervously at her palms while she paced Agnar’s tent, old habits that would endure for centuries to come. She could have gone to her own for her fretting, but it would be there that word would arrive first. And so it did, bursting through the tent flap with a confidence that might have startled her, if her mirror hadn’t gleamed her a warning.

Agnar followed close behind the messenger, his gaze snapping fast to her to suggest she stay quiet for her own safety. Frigga caught a glimpse of many boots just beyond, all in the black and brown of Karnilla’s vowed men. Not just a message, then. Cargo carriers, too. She kept her face tightly neutral.

“Lady Frigga,” said the messenger when introduced, capable of that much courtesy. He promptly ignored her after, turning mostly back towards Agnar. He thrust the sealed scroll in his hand towards the general, marked with the sorceress’s gleaming black mage-wax. “I won’t waste your time nor your hospitality. We’re to take the prisoners straight away back to Nornkeep.”

“Gods forbid Asgard muster a response or a raid,” said Agnar, rumbling through the obvious for any reaction on the messenger’s part.

“Yes. Gods forbid.”

“One from Asgard isn’t necessary.” Frigga took a breath and told herself this was the only plan. Her fingers interlaced tight to hide the sweat and the mottled palm from her tension. She kept her voice low and even, a noble voice. A steadfast voice, one that brooked little argument and hopefully sounded nothing like a bluff. “A claim has been made already. The prince of Asgard and his men must remain in our custody. This has all been a _grand_ misunderstanding.” She laughed once, light and airy.

Both men looked at her, matched each for each in raw confusion. “The Jarl wills it, as friend to Asgard and as neutral overseer of the border and its laws of war,” she said, setting her shoulders primly. “As his daughter, it’s to me to help sort this little problem out.”

Agnar looked at the side of the messenger’s frozen head, then back at her. “You heard word then while I greeted our guest?”

“I did.” She tapped her mirror and smiled. “Speed was our watchword, good general. The Jarl wishes to avoid any… undue incidents.”

“On _what_ grounds does the Jarl interfere?” The messenger was furious, shaking himself out of his stun. He took a step towards her while Agnar put a hand on the pommel of his blade. “Vanaheim has no say in this. This was a raid, foul and foully-meant. These men meant to burn us!”

Last bet for all. “Oh, but my lords, this was no raid. An unfortunate semblance, to be sure. How could some poor farmer know?” She smiled, praying Odin would have the perception and wit to play along. And that Agnar would keep his damned mouth shut till her bluff won this fatal game. “Odin thought to look to Vanaheim for help in diplomacy, with myself as a factor between the realms.”

Agnar mouthed the word _what_ at her, his eyebrows crawling up to his brow. When the messenger looked back at him for support, however, he was sedate instead. “My lady is indeed a fair diplomat.”

_Bless you, Agnar, and may all the Gods watch over thee from this day to your last._

The moment Karnilla’s man looked back at her, Agnar risked just a little to waggle his hands and arms in an almost universal gesture of _bwuh?!_

Frigga took a deep breath before smiling brightly. “Inquire with the lord prisoner himself. I’ll stand with you and bear witness.”

“You’ll do just that. My lady.” The messenger gathered himself and stared at them both in turn. “This best be fair and true.”

_Oh, it had better be. Else I’ve just stuck my neck on the post as well._

. . .

Frigga beamed at Odin from the other side of the iron cage. Since she had never smiled quite like that for him, she hoped he had the sense to realize that meant she was up to something. Odin looked at her and then at the still-raging messenger. He bowed his head in acknowledgment to the man, a prince’s politeness and nothing more.

The messenger looked back to her - and her abruptly tamed face - and then to the prince. “Why do you cross our border, armed and with armed guards?”

Frigga smiled even brighter behind his back, no doubt looking half-inane. Fortunately, her expression was meant solely for the prince. Odin studied her carefully. “For our good lady Frigga, of course.”

“Of course,” she added, nearly chirping it. “It’s just as I say, some matter of minor diplo-“

The look from the man in black cut her off. Odin blinked and did his best to pick up the thread. “Yes, under the eye of the Jarl. It’s just been terrible. My greatest apologies. This was meant to be a way to heal the rift between us, not a method to deepen it.”

Odin’s commanders muttered to each other, puzzled.

“Your men seem unsure,” said the messenger.

“Well, of course.” Odin shrugged. “It’s sometimes a matter of secrecy, when diplomacy is most tangled. But they follow my word, and I led them to the border for purposes of my own. Our capture was unfortunate, our goal utterly misunderstood.”

“For the Jarl. And so some farmer sees war where you meant peace.” It came out in a growl.

“Farm-” Odin watched Frigga as she smiled and wrung her hands. He didn’t blink this time. A quick study. Some of the tension left her shoulders. “Damnation. That’s how we were spotted.” He shook his head, somber and earnest. “Absolutely. My intent was more pure than that. How better to find a way to heal the rift between your country and mine? What better way to look for understanding between a warrior’s ways and… and yours?”

Frigga blinked, not quite certain where he thought he was going with this. The messenger glanced back at her and still she smiled, daft and female, utterly harmless in a world of warriors. “What way?” asked the man suspiciously. He looked to Odin for the answer, and not her. It was going to be up to him to make the save.

Frigga swore it looked like he was bracing himself. Then she found out why. “Well, because I’ve had to be a bit subtle, even towards my own father and the Jarl.” He smiled easily, though his teeth seemed braced for a blow. “We’re courting, you see. Quietly. He was hoping for a different outcome.”

_Oh you mad, daft, fuzzy-footed… and what hoary old ballad of silly romance did you tear that from? We’re lost. He’s never going to buy that. I am not, nor have I ever been one for sentiment such as this._

The messenger looked curiously at her, not seeing the immediate fury and only that bemused little smile. Agnar was dead white. She saw his thoughts plain in his eyes. The Jarl was going to kill him, regardless they somehow wrangle out of the next five minutes. “A girl’s fantasy of love, and a fair and mighty prince.” The messenger sighed and, chilly with new anger, Frigga realized the dumb move was going to work. At least well enough to buy time. She couldn’t bring herself to enjoy her success in saving Odin.

Little women.

Oh, the prince was freshly _dead_.

“You see? And me away from the border, to try and ease these tensions. Certainly, she is of Vanaheim and not one of Norn’s own sisters… but there is the other matter.” Odin cleared his throat. Not a fool, he saw her growing fury in lit eyes. Still, he dug in and went with it, a raw and earnest young man in love. “Magic and blade. Why should we be apart, treating each other like the enemy? And from such things, I find my emotions followed the diplomacy. I have been hoping the good Lady would feel the same. So I encourage my men on a journey that is, in fact, born of sentiment alone.”

Very, _very_ dead.

The messenger looked to all faces in turn, defeated and upset. “I will send word to my lady. And we will surely expect the _direct_ word of the Jarl in this before we have satisfaction.”

“You will have it,” said Frigga. Assuming the Jarl did not simply die outright of apoplexy when he heard of this stunt and its current outcome. “On my word.”


	6. The Truth in the Lie

 

Jarl Freyr was a slight man, quick for a warrior and agile of form. Even as an elder approaching Bor’s own years, his steps were easy and his countenance as fair as his wife and his daughter. But not today. Today there were red blotches high in his cheeks and Frigga thought she could hear the squeak of flesh as he knotted and wrung his hands tightly behind his back. He looked from Frigga to Odin and back. “You presume in my name. You place me betwixt Karnilla and Bor. And most of all, you claim it for _love_!” His voice rose at the end, near enough a king’s own roar. A vein stood on his forehead. “Gods of my fathers, Frigga.”

“My lord, it was not she who set that much in motion.”

Frigga winced. She was still infuriated with Odin, but this was not going to provide satisfaction. The dead silence while gatesmen moved her and the prince from the camp to her Vanaheim home had been better in that regard. She could not murder with a look, but by all the old gods and the stars in the sky, she had _tried_.

“Were you addressed, son of Bor?” The Jarl fixed him with one grey eye, knowing full well he had the higher power both in his own hall and as the offended elder. “Did I ask for another’s clarification?”

Odin studied the high, hot anger in the Jarl’s face and bowed his head. “You did not. My apologies.”

Freyr turned to his daughter next. “Is what he says true? What of what has been said is true? Be plain now, so I can _try_ to sort out this damnable mess.” He passed a hand over his brow. “Before you begin, you should be aware that the All-Father is more livid than I. What saves you, however, is the knowledge that his son is safe. That tempers the rage somewhat. Makes him manageable, and keeps him from endangering your claims to Karnilla’s man. For now. Give me what I need.”

Frigga cast a warning glance towards Odin, the message in it plain - _let me handle this part and don’t interfere._ “You know full well what was going to happen if we turned the prince over to Nornheim.” She put a hand up and bowed her head. “You raised me to be wise in diplomacy, father, and to think like you. Mother and the good lady Eir have taught me to think of others in context with your tactical mind. Between the two, I could not see the prince handed to Karnilla. In the end, that would have inflamed the war as much as the All-Father’s massacre.” She explained the rest, carefully showing her logic.

Freyr rolled his eyes up to the painted marble ceiling of his hall when she was done. “And so you moved. Without authorization. Without another plan, or with full alliance. Without the full weight of mine own word. An improvisational conspiracy with the king’s son, a mummer’s play.”

“There was no time for anything else.” She kept calm.

“I have no daughters. I have four sons and a war-wight with a pretty smile. More ferocious than them all.” Freyr dropped onto a well-cushioned stool, one hand fussing at his knee while he stared wearily but with lasting love at his daughter. He looked at Odin, whose face pinched as he talked. “And you came up with the mooning notion of playing for her adoration. Truly, I can tell you have not known my war-wight long.”

“ _Thank_ you, father.” Frigga couldn’t help but blurting. “I thought General Agnar about to choke.”

“There’s the two of us, then. You speak up to save him as well.”

“Agnar did nothing but follow my lead. I couldn’t bear him taking blame.”

Freyr sighed again, almost heavy enough to shift stone. “This is the situation. Karnilla must gain proof of no wrongdoing in her realm - save for the giddy foolishness of the young. Bor wants his war to continue and knows full damn what she hears isn’t the truth. But if Bor speaks out, he may still lose his son. And if Karnilla presses against a pair of young lovers, that most alluring of a commoner’s ballads, she stands to lose the high ground she has cultivated so thoroughly. And your romantic display with its diplomatic intent no doubt relies on the revelation that trusted Vanaheim yet harbors gentle sorcery within our borders.” He began to clap, sardonic. Then he looked Odin dead in the eye. “What in _Hel_ were you thinking?”

Odin shifted. “I ask leave of you both to speak to Lady Frigga privately.”

“Don’t ask me, lad.” Freyr threw his hands up. “The war-wights demand sacrifice.”

“Father!”

“She has a knife, you know.” Freyr rose from his stool, shaking his head and moving to leave them. “These years in the fields amongst your battleborn kind, she probably has three.”

. . .

Frigga paced in the silence after he left. “I had a plan and you made a mess of it with that nonsense. Now Father’s right. We’re in a bind. Any thread pulled and the lie is revealed!” A braid came loose in her frustration and she let it fall, coming to rest along her shoulder in a wave. “We’re at worse than where we began. Now we’re the focus of the fray.”

“What if there were no lie?”

She laughed at him, a single abrupt noise of pure merriment. Only the once, when she saw his face remained serious. Then she studied him carefully, her brow coming in tight. “Oh, don’t make this worse. Don’t-“ She reddened. This was an impossibility. “Don’t think to play _me_ like some child heartened by the tales of old beloveds.”

Odin looked troubled. “I don’t intend to. Nor do I mean you to carry the burden of the story.” He spread his hands. “Then let me be clearer. What if there were no lie to me?”

Frigga looked at him, that damnably earnest face and those hands spread. For once, the mighty warrior and prince stood defenseless. “I would say this revelation more abrupt than your change of heart from that first talk of ours.” She tutted another laugh, a sharp one. “You’ve earned my friendship, lord prince, but you barely _know_ me. Nor did you set upon the fields this morning with such intent. There is still a lie.”

“But to resolve my father’s intent, I came to you. To even get to this point as a diplomat and not a warrior, I came to you. And now it comes about you save my life twice.” Odin looked away, thoughtful. “These also are not quick changes, and their import is deep.” He looked back, apologetic. “I am not often a demonstrative man. I was raised for war and war’s thoughts and the future duty and burden of Asgard. So when I think of diplomacy in our realm, and I think on change, I think of a woman with honey braids who brooked no argument from me and holds no fear of my title or my reputation. That’s new to me. It struck somewhere not my mind, which is tactical, nor my hand, which holds the blade. So where else is left? That is the heart. I have never thought much of it before. But now I think I do.”

Frigga passed a hand over her face, and then took the stool her father had vacated. “What a damnable mess.” She looked up at him. “Again, I thought I hadn’t taken you for an impulsive man.”

“Does this sound impulsive?” His brow furrowed. “Then let’s phrase it coldly, let my mind speak for the heart. I will need a queen someday, and my father, though he cannot outright press me but manipulate alone, wants a diplomatic solution. He looks to Alfheim, if I may confide, but I see this more pressing issue - our demonization of magic, even small spells. It has given us a war we cannot win, not as we are. So I do not fully deny him his notions of forging peace through partnership, but I have a different goal. He wants an Elven queen for me, but they are distant and I do not know them. I see a sorceress. Controversial, yes. But whom I _do_ know. If not as well as I could. Yet.”

“You’re right. That sounds coldly tactical. I am unmoved.”

His voice turned droll. “And here you claim to not care for the romantic.”

Frigga rolled her eyes. “I mislike the sap and the boldly declared exhortations. I care little for the gaudy show. If I were to have anything, it’d be an earnest love. That’s where such things endure better, I figure.” Her mouth shut as she considered what she’d just said. Earnestness. Was that not Odin’s manner with her since the start? It was her turn to look troubled. “If we must speak earnestly then, you must be aware then that I do not love you, lord prince. I don’t mean to be unkind. As you do not know me, by my measure, I don’t know you well enough for that.”

He didn’t look hurt. He only nodded slowly, a faint smile peeking through the trim beard. “Then we come again to a possible truth. All I said was that we were _courting.”_

That drew a smile from her in return, a small one. “A war of semantics has few survivors. That won’t serve you long, not if you intend to continue to pretend to be so starry-eyed that you broke the border to see me. And, well, with what I know of you… who will buy _that_ tale?”

“Forget that.” He looked around and found another stool set by a small table where the Jarl kept fruit and a jug of mead. He took it and placed it close to Frigga - respectfully so. “Leave the tactics beside a moment. So you do not love me now. I have no choice but to accept that and I must respect your words. Am I barred from the attempt to court you, to take some time and know you better to see if you might learn to or choose to care for me?”

“If I say no, it’s Karnilla’s men for you ultimately. You leave me in a hard place with that.”

He laughed, but not at her. “Or ultimately not. A royal wedding is a monstrous burden and much can happen during the process. The embroidery alone can take half the decade. We might at worst remain as friends and play that unwanted mummer’s game ’til interest in my murder wanes again. Regardless, I don’t think we need worry on that yet. And I don’t want your true response forced by the thought of my danger. Know that it is meaningless to me, and don’t let it weight your answer. I walked into the river’s crossing once, I’ll do it again.”

“I wonder if that wouldn’t be fair to your earnest plea. It was earnest, wasn’t it?” She realized a finger had found the end of her freed streak of hair, curling it as she thought. The realization came because the prince was watching her hand with a bemused and oddly soft expression.

“It was. I don’t want a diplomatic prize.” He looked down at his feet as her hand stilled, quiet. “I think I’d prefer as much an equal as our social mores will bear. And then some, perhaps. I am not made for soft things and easy leadership.” He chuckled. “I rather doubt you’d accept anything less from a partner.”

“Hah. So you do know me, a little.” Frigga ended her words with a small chuckle. It faded as she found a more serious matter taking precedence. “And what of your father, who will eventually - perhaps sooner rather than later - discover you would court a witch?”

“First I’d correct him and say again that you are a sorceress. That is the kinder phrase, is it not?”

“Right, and after he roars a hole through the throne room’s wall and accuses you of corruption by our foul work, what do you do?”

“What I choose.” Odin grinned up at her. “For the people have been hearing those other points of view we feed out, and the people weary of a war whose origins already grow too hazy to stoke the fire. And the people, Lady Frigga, though you and I might differ in the telling of it - the people _love_ a damn good story.”

She clapped a hand to her mouth, covering the giggle. She realized then also that despite his stoic manner and careful words, he had a gift for drawing a laugh out of her even when she had a reason to be angry with him. That wasn’t love, no. Not yet. But, she decided, it might be worth a try.

Frigga let her hand lower. Then she reached it out to him, palm up. “Very well, Odin. Prince of Asgard, son of the All-Father, mighty warrior of the Nine Realms. You may try for my hand.”

He took it in his, letting his fingers curl around hers. “You won’t make it too easy for me.”

“Well, Father was right, you know.” She winked at him. “I _do_ have a knife.”

. . .

“No. No, no, no, no.” Daisy flapped a hand urgently at Loki as he paused for breath. “Hell, no. You are not leaving me on this okay kinda cute but totally sedate damn-near marriage of convenience crap. Like, it’s cool, and I like it, and they were totally made for each other just by the way they thought their way through all this stuff, and I get that, but _come on, man._ ”

Loki arched an eyebrow at her, smiling wryly. “Not all true tales of love are made to sweep you off your feet. If it worked for them, what of it? She was clever and he was not demonstrative. Our ways might not be yours.”

“You have been telling me this story for like _hours_ and I am not even getting a kissing scene out of it. _Dude_. You are holding out on me here. Where’s the goods?”

He was unable to keep from looking a little uncomfortable. “Daisy, they were my parents. They raised me, for better and for worse. I knew them both for a thousand years and a little more, and while there is a whole _box_ of social mores we hold differently than humans, picturing our parents in their amorousness is not exactly fun for any species, I think. I’m not drawing back the bedcurtains here. Cut me one piece of mercy.”

She made a little _ugh_ noise he found familiar and almost comforting, fingers returning to their gnarling against the pillow when she was done waggling at him.

He leaned back against the chair as she stared down at the pillow, her disappointment tangible. The corner of his lip quirked. “That said, I didn’t say I was done. A story isn’t over ’til the words ‘The End,’ you know.”

“This is where you blurt ‘em and chuck your thumb at the door. Don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

“I am not that evil.” He looked up at his traveling magelight, amused. “Well, not _today_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update on Friday to finish this.


	7. Ceremonial Blades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First part of today's final update.

 

There was little Bor could say or do when the free prince of the Nine Realms rode through the crowded streets of Asgard on his grey warhorse, a noble sorceress of Vanaheim at his side on a pretty golden mare of her own. Not when any roar of his would be drowned out by the cheers of the people who watched the young pair pass by as they shared smiles with each other. The Heroine of the Witch’s Crossing, they were calling her already, a fine and fair woman whose once-secret courtship with a besotted young prince was the only thing to save him from Karnilla’s clutches. As far as they knew.

There were ballads already filling the air of the mead halls, facts sent ahead by foot messenger and royal raven twisting and changing themselves into that better story Odin foresaw in the Jarl’s house. No one cared about the revelation that made Bor’s hands shake with barely contained fury. In fact, as the couple passed into one of the main squares of the city, Lady Frigga tossed a wisp of a scarf into the air to be caught by the wind. A snap of her fingers a moment later and it shattered into a kaleidoscope of jewel-bright birds, all of whom danced off into the high air and then vanished. Children clapped in delight, women cheered, and not a one of them thought to fear what else such illusions could hide. There was no reason to, not when faced with Frigga’s warm and genuine smile.

They rode easily towards the giant gates of the palace as the sunset fell behind it, golden spires turning into firelight as they passed within into the All-Father’s furious - but defeated - royal presence.

. . .

Short months later, almost two years now, Prince Odin passed one of the unrolled scrolls to Frigga with a mild grunt. “Not that I ever doubted, but your father is as good as his word. Better that he already had a toe-hold in the realm as watchman, but I admire his ability to turn what is arguably truly a betrayal into an act of heroism amongst the people of the Norn.”

Frigga read the tactical report with a smile. Jarl Freyr had personally arranged a surge at the garrison originally intended to watch over her, at Odin’s private request. The two of them had perservered against the All-Father, controlling the fight. Now it was a new staging area where Vanaheim was joining the fight directly against Karnilla - but alongside their warriors and generals were a handful of _sorceresses,_ friends and family of Freyr’s departed wife who volunteered now to be that other, less fearful aspect of magic. As she herself had. Their target was simple, they struck Karnilla’s magical defenses directly. And they fought to keep the ordinary people of the province safe from _both_ sides of the battle. In that more neutral kindness, paired with a growing understanding of magic, Karnilla’s allies were already beginning to fall away. “You know full well I’m tempted to ride out with them.”

“Let the temptation pass.” Odin spoke with that careful thoughtfulness he often had in her company. “You’ve been a healer too long. To see battle with a blade in your hand, take one word of advice from me. Save it for when you must need it most. Let these others volunteer. It’s personal for them. Your war is better fought here.”

She considered that, then decided to lighten his mood. “Yes, me versus your father. Will he ever unbend towards the idea of your choice of courtship?”

“In all probability, no.” He huffed a small laugh, a trace of hurt hidden in it. “There is a hard core of the stubborn in my family.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said, so cheerily the sarcasm was plain. She laughed at his look, knowing she had succeeded in making him feel a little better. “If you really wish to wind him up, you might point out that Karnilla’s nose is put out of joint fit to match. They could commiserate, if they could just bear to look at each other.”

“She loses her dominant position. You were right.” He reached out to tap at the maps, all warrior once again. “Without the fear and friendship of the vale folk there, that’s the major waterways and half her food sources. I see a probability she’ll withdraw to lick her wounds.”

“As a sorceress, however, she’s going to do it well enough that you won’t be able to root her out. Not this year.” Frigga clasped her hands atop the briefings and topographical surveys. “Maybe not for many. And she’ll be dangerous when she pops back out. She’ll move fast and make new allies in ground that’s forgotten her threat.”

“But vulnerable.” He nodded. “All else to the side, these have been good plans and good outcomes.”

“All else?” Frigga snorted at him, teasing. “Ah, the courtship grows dismissed at last as the mild effort it was.”

A slow, small smile crept through Odin’s beard. “The tales are already being told of this war, Lady Frigga, and in the end, it seems it was no great and mighty general to be Karnilla’s most dangerous foe. No prince nor lord. No, it took a fire-born healer to drive her out, and not in the manner expected. How could I not admire that? There is nothing mild here, not in my eyes. Although you do remain a challenge - if I send flowers, they must go to Eir, for that alone is where they are appreciated. Horses? To your brothers. Gold? Pointless, isn’t it? I have no gifts worthy enough for you.”

“You gave me a pretty steel plate for my shoulder, marked well with those lilies I passed to Eir long ago. I liked that.” She smiled at him. “And you give those things knowing it pleases me that they go on to others I care for.”

The slightest trace of a flush appeared along the fringes of his beard. Not a demonstrative man, but there were emotions enough under the surface. And the only rage in him she had seen thus far was one night when Bor had taken him aside for a talk that became a fight instead. Two lions roaring in the halls, and the younger outshouted the elder this time. Maybe the first time. Not a poor time for anger, she decided. Bor’s words regarding her had been less than kind. She never told the prince that she had overheard them.

Though it was with private worry that Frigga, as a healer, began to see something in the old king that she couldn’t bear to tell Odin. Not yet, and perhaps he already knew. Bor was a man nearly at the end of his last legend of war, inclined to let go in due time. There would be a new king in Asgard soon. Not this year. But there was less than a century left to him, she reckoned. He was already often off in a king’s deepest sleep, the privilege and right of Asgard’s royal guardian. Those were going to be hard years for a fated prince. Sorrowful, even for the strong. Not good ones to go through alone.

She looked up to see Odin watching her, flapped her hand. “I was off in my thoughts. Thinking ahead.”

“The mind of yours I admire, hard at work once again at what may come.” He smiled when she flushed next. “I tell you you’re pretty and that’s true, but that’s not the thing that startles you the most.”

“I like being acknowledged for being myself alone.” Frigga shrugged, trying to not show she was touched. Perhaps more than that, if she were to be honest. “You’ve learned me well enough for that.”

He was still smiling, but there was a sad edge to it, and that was the moment she knew he knew at least part of her thoughts. He looked away. “He seeks to stir trouble with the jotun once again, the king. A safer target, and a popular one. Their warlords stir anew to fury and power, and their own old king is already studying his sons for their next crowning moot. But none of them look strong - save for young Laufey. It might be the shamans take power this time and buy us another generation of further peace. If we’re fortunate.” His voice held doubts.

“You think…” She looked around the hall on instinct, quiet. “You worry your father seeks to fall in war, like the kings of old wanted for their end. No restful death, but the blood and the thunder instead.”

“I do,” said Odin, just as quietly. “And I do not think I can stop him. He’ll helm the war personally, and leave me to watch over the kingdom.” He went quieter yet. “And that is how I will come to the throne, as the bier is brought to my feet. I will not by crowned by his old, proud hands as he was by his father. I will be crowned by Death Herself, and the gold will feel quite cold then.”

Not thinking, she reached out and put her hand atop his. She looked down at it, a hand small and fine atop a thick hand that already carried the burls and scars of war and knew what she was about to say was true. “No reason for you to think you will face that future alone. You have friends and advisors.” She took a breath. “And you have been loved.”

Odin looked at her, troubled deeper than she had ever seen. And then the grey cleared with a small and careful smile. “You know I will ask.”

She laughed, clearing the rest of the mood away from the room. With her hand still atop his, she leaned in for a kiss atop his lips, and not the cheek as she more often did. “And you already have my answer.”

. . .

Odin had been right about one thing. The embroidery alone took five years, between the stitchwork for royal tables and small wars among seamstresses for the right to clothe the family and its new Princess to come. Meats were collected and cured, the dwarves went nearly mad preparing cheeses and gold and other gifts, and diplomats throughout the Nine Realms and beyond jockeyed hard for favor before an All-Father who had little choice but to set aside his beloved wars for a while and oversee his son’s chosen joy. An Asgardian wedding on this scale was a rare event. Nobles married every few hundred years or so, but this most royal spectacle was marked in millennia and more. The visitors were not going to lose their chance to play for new politics among the changing family. Even the ambassadors of the Kree came for a brief time, and were mostly polite.

Mostly.

To Bor’s credit, he kept his mouth shut during these years of preparation. He knew a lost war when he saw one, and Karnilla was all but vanished from the realms. Nornkeep stood empty, a surprised scout returning word at nightfall, shouting fit to wake the palace.

And once, at a small event where Frigga’s brothers attempted to sing a ballad in Bor’s name and ended in a shoving match, the old lion even smiled a little at the hapless chaos they wreaked.

. . .

For all the pomp, preparation, and necessary pre-ceremonial duties before both the stars and older gods, the wedding itself was a quick and glad thing. On a fine early summer morning, a young bride was helped aboard not a traditional white horse but that fine bay stallion that had once taken her to the palace to visit Odin only months after their first meeting. Frigga thought that fitting, and her white dress flecked with rich green flared brightly against the reddish darkness of the horse’s broad back. She had begun riding the bay from the edge of the river’s crossing the day before, that fjord where so much else began for the pair, and it was in a magnificent inn at the edge of the city proper where handmaidens and her mentor, Eir, would prepare her for the ceremony.

Odin visited the inn that night, but not a single one of the women who oversaw this part of the ritual gave him away. It was known to their older hands that the wedding night itself was a stressful time, and more so when under such public eye. Better that the couple have a little space of their own, outside such business. And in the morning the prince crept back to the palace, in a fine and good enough mood that no one said a word, but damn well everyone knew.

Weddings have traditions of their own, really, outside the ones written in the books.

And the people saw a glowing princess and a happy prince, meeting on the royal red carpet flung out from the gates of Asgard. Odin took her hand in his and guided his lady and future Queen inside, followed by Einherjar and generals, by handmaidens and foreign nationals, by family and a handful of lucky sorts that would be allowed to filter into the huge throne room, where the wedding itself would be completed.

Frigga’s youngest brother presented red-cloaked Prince Odin with a fine sword forged from the same mystic meteorite that made Jarl Freyr’s own blade, the ancient Laevateinn. Odin bowed his head over it in gratitude, sheathing it immediately at his side as tradition demanded. Another such piece of meteorite was granted later, as a gift for some future use. The fate of that stone is well known, for like the blades it forged, it became the heart of some great thunder. Then Freyr himself passed Bor the rings, twined gold and silver and marked with small gems to recall the stars they answered to.

Knelt before the golden throne of Asgard, Odin and Frigga regarded each other with those little, easy smiles they shared, and neither much noticed when the rings were slipped on or when the vows were made. He smiled brighter when the thin silver crown of a princess was laid atop her braids, though, and when they rose to their feet, the hall was nearly torn asunder with the cheers.

The feast itself lasted over a year with other events dotting the next decade, the royal stablemaster becoming quite infamous by the damage he did to both meat and mead. A legacy that comes up as it led his son, mighty Volstagg, in later years to keep up the tradition of being a regular mess at feasting-time.

These were the things the prince and the new princess remembered, in the decades to come where Bor declared war on the aging Jotun king at the deadliest outskirts of Jotunheim. When eventually both lords would die in their drive to see the end with ancient valor.

Amidst the sorrow, the better memories and the knowledge they would make many more. And then one day much later, Queen Frigga touched her hand to the brow of a squalling new prince, one born with lungs already fit to shout down the thunder.

A victory for them, a triumph of understanding, and a love that endured millennia.


	8. Shards of Change

8\. Shards of Change

. . .

“Aw, you snuck in a near-sex scene. And kinda skipped yourself.” Daisy smirked at him with those tired eyes, her hands knotted together as she still leaned forward. She looked more content with the pomp of a royal wedding as a finale to the story, at least. Loki hoped that would be good enough.

He frowned, though, still unable to avoid some discomfort with the related topics. “Well, as stated, they had their true-born son. How he got there is a matter of some foregone conclusion that I should hope I have no need to explain to you.”

“I got the birds and the bees talk a hella while back, you’re good.” He rolled his eyes and she giggled at him, a trace of old times in that laugh. “You don’t really want to get into the rest of the stuff.”

“Don’t really, no.” He clasped his hands and interlaced the fingers like a professor, resting them on one crossed knee as he looked at her. She was fully out of her shell for him, at least for now, but the scars were not going to leave. It wasn’t his job to heal them for her. There was no way he could. “They had many, many good years. I find it fortunate I’m part of some of them.” The corners of his mouth deepened. “And yet there I am, amidst some of the worst, too.”

“But they change.”

“They do, Daisy. The shards of all our relationships change us, fallen by the good wind and the ill. And when the person is gone, the changes remain. That’s how we find other little pieces of ourselves, the things in us we didn’t understand.” He sighed. She’d heard what she could. The rest was up to her. “There’s not much left to say, except the blunt. If you run, know the difference between running _from_ something and running _to_ something. It’s subtle, but it matters.”

She bowed her head, her face disappearing within the dark veil of her short hair one more time. “Coulson won’t like that you said that. I don’t think it’s what he wanted when he talked to you.”

“And as I told you at the outset, what I’m told to do and what I actually do are not always coincident. Further again, we must allow that I have regrettable more experience in this. I’ll worry about Coulson. You must find out how to care for yourself.”

She sat in silence for a while, her hands still working against each other in thought. At least she’d stopped tearing up one of his throw pillows. “Were you ever in love?”

Loki realized the question surprised him. Deeply. It took him a moment to decide how to answer, and as usual, he went for deflection first. A delay at least. “How do you mean?”

Her voice was dry. “You know what I mean, dude.”

He allowed a laugh, near as low and wry as her words. “Relationships, lovers… well, yes. The ridiculous fracas with Lorelei and Amora was proof enough of that much normalcy, and proof that Karnilla’s long tale had an ending after all. Just not one I’ll tell today.” He looked away. “Enough proof that I whiffed there a bit. Typical, I suppose.”

She said it again, not dry this time. Just quiet. “You know what I mean.”

Loki leaned back. For his friends, he found himself too often trapped in honesty. He’d given them too much terrain to approach, and it was harder to lie to them. Himself, well, that was still easier. But for her, the truth, then. He wasn’t sad, at least he didn’t think so. He spoke matter of factly. “No. Sometimes I think that much is not meant for me.”

To her credit, and probably also due to her recent experience, she let him go after that with a small nod. “Okay. So.” She took an inhale and rubbed feeling back into legs that had been sitting too long, ready to get up. “I got a bunch of things to think about.”

He stood up first, the door of his rooms opening untouched with a flick of his fingers. “So you do. If you want to speak of anything else, that door will be opened.” He looked down at himself, nearly forgetting. He patted at his pocket, then pulled a small device out. He passed it to her when she looked at him, surprised. “And one more thing. Should you run. That will not track you, you have not only my word but my oath. But if you need, whether it be help or just a voice, you can use that. I’ll hear.”

“Is it magic?” Daisy turned it over in her hand as she stood. It was a simple version, a slender black device that would pass as a burner phone in a pinch even though it had no maker’s label. No trouble to figure out.

“It’s something Rocket can make, the little mammal you met once. Better even than the crystals we used before. That one is tied only to another device I alone hold. And before you wonder, he doesn’t have a backdoor line on it. Both I and Groot made sure of that.” One towering giant wearing a paler prince’s face, one grumbly and protective tree. Rocket had flung up his furry hands and sworn to be exploded if he got cute with his own gadgets at the cost of someone else’s privacy.

She looked up at him with a smile, a real one. “Thanks.” Then her face creased again. “Can I ask a favor that’s going to be really hard and probably weird?”

Already wary after a question he should have expected and didn’t, Loki braced himself. “You can ask.”

“I want a hug. I kinda blew up on Mack when he hugged me, it’s like, I should have done better for him.” She sniffled, keeping it under control as best she could. “Because even if I run, it’s not because I hate any of you.”

Startled into a laugh, he hesitated for a moment. Then he stretched one arm out, allowing her to come into his side for a stiff but genuine hug. He looked down at her with her hair under his chin. “It will be better, Daisy. Just not today.”

. . .

Frigga sighed as the baby in her arms murmured softly to her. She looked down at the boy, still tiny enough to be dangerously fragile, then back to her husband, the King and All-Father as he paced the quarters they shared most years. There were separate towers for other times; not for lack of love, but for the simple privacy long and royal lives needed. But with young children between them at last, they found they usually liked this quiet time together.

Right now, however, his tension filled the air like smoke. She tried to clear it. “The war is won, my love. It cost a king, it cost several millennia of our lives, it cost your eye, and it cost half their own resources. They will not break the peace this time. If you must consider pressing further, I say force the jotun king to be torn down and put his imprisoned wife in his place. She’s a wiser sort, I heard.” She looked down at the baby, finding herself smiling as he cooed back up. Fat little fingers and bright gleaming eyes.

Odin glanced at her and then at the child and she realized she couldn’t read his expression as he looked into eyes that were a pretty green mixed with grey, eyes that hid a strange and jewel-like red. “It’s not a risk I feel we can take. And if they so much as grumble, I’m prepared to draw my spear once more.” He shook his head, that stubborn thing in him coming out stronger and harder as the years drew on. “This isn’t peace, Frigga, it’s a detente with a race that loathes us. I must consider our future with them.”

Race, he said. She heard in it that other word he liked to use for that people. _Monsters_. Now with this new child in her arms, she realized she hated both the words when they meant the same thing and spat the old fire at him. “You learned to see us _witches_ as more once. You learned to see me, see us as a mirror of what the warriors are. Do not the jotun warrant some of that same introspection?”

“They are beastlier, Frigga.” The hard thing in him, cut with an older king’s worry. Bor’s real legacy come forth after all. Not a berserker, her love, but the stoic fear of the future instead. He didn’t look at the baby as he spoke to her.

“Are they?” She said it carefully. Not all knives were held in hidden sheathes at her waist. She lifted the baby in her arms so her husband had no choice but to see little Loki if he wanted to look at her again. Whether blue or Asgardian pale, the cast of his features would be the same to her. “Or are they as full of flaw and potential as we?”

So trapped, he looked back at his wife of many centuries. He looked at her with his one good eye and found hers with the same trust and love and occasional deep exasperation. Then they went to the eyes of the son he chose to adopt with the future’s fears in his tactical mind, and there was the old and troubled look under a furrowed brow. He could say nothing to her words, which is how she knew she had the truth of it.

Perhaps in time Odin would gentle again. As the child grew and became whoever he might be. When he turned away, Frigga curled the baby closer, giving him a smile that was returned with a wet gurgle. “Mother?” she heard behind her, in that high and young voice. “And Father.”

Sweet Thor. Doting and easy, but already more Odin’s son even at this age. Or Great-Grandfather Buri, perhaps - there was a little bit of fire in the boy, and there the berserker might come out in time. They both turned to Thor as he bowed while holding the hand of one of the nurses, barely out of his toddling. Loki would match him quickly, being only a few years younger. “I’m sorry. I asked the nurse if I could come and see my brother.” Freed of the amused nurse, his little hands stretched towards Frigga with an eagerness that made her feel better.

Odin still said nothing. So Frigga knelt and beckoned her son closer. “Will you take him to his crib for me, little prince?”

“I will!” He beamed up, delighted at the responsibility.

“You mustn’t drop him.”

“I’ll never!” Even in Thor’s still-pudgy arms, the baby looked smaller than most. But true to his word, Thor held his little brother closer as they smiled at each other for the first time. He looked up at Frigga. “Thank you, mother!”

“And thank you. Rest well, children. I love you both.”

Still Odin said nothing, and his face remained troubled for some hours. So it would be. Frigga didn’t love him any less for it. They had time enough for all things, and she would be there to help ease those worries when he was ready for it.

In this, she had complete faith.

. . .

“She’s going to run.”

Loki looked up from where he lounged to see Phil Coulson’s back still turned to him. He could see his friend’s hands, though, and they were clasped tightly together. The fake flesh was digging white into his real fingers, but Phil didn’t seem to notice. “Yes. She is.” He sat up in the soft leather chair, pitching his voice more strongly. “And since she doesn’t need the advice I could give any longer, I’ll pass it to you instead. Let her go. No cages, Phil. They don’t work. She needs to find her feet, and in time they may well take her back in this direction. She knows who and where her friends are, though I’m sure I can’t keep you from watching. If she doesn’t return, however, it won’t be because _she’s_ the one that changed.”

Coulson took that in as he stared out the window of the Director’s office. “I think it’s gonna get worse around here before it gets better, you know that? How does that even happen, the years we’ve had?” He turned to look at his friend and knocked his cybernetic hand against the thick sheaf of official documents. “The things we’ve fought, and I still didn’t think it was going to get like this.”

Loki glanced at the cover. The Sokovia Accords, signed and passed into international law. Yes, he had read them. There were a number of implications in their pages he thought deeply worrisome, and not only for his own skin while he chose to live on Earth. There had already been consequences, and those were plain on Phil’s face, too. There were going to be more. Changes he couldn’t yet predict. Loki reached across the table to the thick bottle of scotch. He thunked it atop the file in an obvious insult to the words inside, then clinked two glasses together before he poured a measure out for each of them. He took his with a salute, smiling grimly.

The small drama gave Phil his own smile back and he picked up his glass. “So, are you going to stay?”

The scotch went down with a pleasant burn and Loki poured himself another shot. “Bitter irony should I survive Thanos and fall to some mortal bureaucracy instead.” He drained it without a wince, grinning a little as Phil tried to do the same and ate a cough for his own ego’s sake. “I will stay and see what comes.”

He was touched to see that gave his friend some comfort, then frowned as something buzzed in his pocket. Loki pulled out a small black device nearly identical to the one he’d given away earlier, then frowned more deeply when he read the words on its screen.

Phil reached out for the bottle. “What’s up? That’s not your phone.”

“No,” said Loki, scrolling through the information that had been sent to him. “A message from Rocket, that reprobate of both our acquaintance.” He looked up, bemused. “Seems he’s up to something malignantly stupid and thinks it’s wise he calls to _me_ for advice.”

“Oh, he’s boned.” Phil laughed and gulped a shot.

Loki laughed as well, enjoying a moment of genuine merriment. “Yes, I suspect he is.”

“You need to go?”

“Nothing I can do to personally pull his tail out of whatever fire he’s stuck it in.” Loki shoved the device into his pocket again, then took the entire bottle once he put the cap back on it. He stood up. “But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to steal your liquor and see if I can think of some word to help his issue on short notice.”

“Does it ever stop being so goddamn _weird_ around here?”

“By all the gods, Phil, I should hope not.” Loki wave the bottle in a mock salute and let himself out the door. He called the last back over his shoulder, catching a quick glimpse of his friend’s tired grin. “It’s better this way, really. I would _hate_ to be bored for long.”

The door to Phil’s office shut with a snap of the lock.

Somewhere else, another door opened and Daisy ran out.

_~Fin_

. . .

_The world is always ending, for someone._

_~Neil Gaiman, Signal to Noise_

_. . ._

_May 25, 2016. All relevant rights remain in the hands of Marvel with no infringement intended. All realities are fair game. Loki is a little bastard with too much to say._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rocket and Groot will eventually return, up to something malignantly stupid.


End file.
